Last Friday, a marketing brochure was released promoting the sale of 6 Columbus Circle, an 88-room boutique hotel that exudes a modernist ’60s flair throughout its spaces. While the brick and limestone gem owned by the Pomeranc Group received an ungainly five-story addition in 2007, its ornate 58th Street facade survived intact–though now, its days may be numbered.

The New York Observer reported last month that the owners have placed the building up for sale, tapping Cushman & Wakefield as exclusive marketers. With angled views of Central Park starting at less than 100 feet above street level, a source estimates the property could fetch a staggering $1,400 per buildable square foot, a pot of gold to developers’ eyes. And the marketing brochure makes the possibilities very clear, conceptualizing a 700-foot-tall, mixed-use spire from the nimble, 42-foot-wide lot.

As if an afterthought, the end of the brochure lists the site’s secondary option to preserve what’s already here: a century-old neoclassical structure that, in Midtown, is becoming increasingly hard to come by. But who can resist? With a zoning policy that rewards lot maximization and is blind to other values, a new tower is all but guaranteed. Like many new projects, the lot’s probable fate represents the city’s divisive real estate trajectory; all right to some, and to others, all that is wrong.